Tom Douglas

By Pat Owen & Connie Adams

It's hard to miss news about Tom Douglas, Seattle's phenom chef and restaurant owner. Local press has kept tabs on him since the early 1990s.

Douglas has grown to be a large presence on Seattle's restaurant scene with Etta's Seafood, Dahlia Lounge, the Palace Kitchen and now Lola. A spin-off retail bakery and a line of spice rubs and sauces are part of the expanding Douglas empire. The latest addition is the Palace Ballroom, an event space that will feature the catering division, already doing big business in other spaces. And, of course, there are the cookbooks, two of them now and surely more on the way.

But don't be misled, thinking of Douglas as a creative dreamy sort prone to bursts of culinary inspiration and madness. Just the opposite, he thrives on the business of business. "It's a competitive industry and one that's hard to make money in. So you have to look at alternative lines of business," Douglas says.  Alternative lines is a simple statement for the diversity Douglas has created in his own brand.

Tom Douglas with wife/business partner Jackie Cross put on a gala pre-opening party for the Palace Ballroom featuring plenty of great food and dancing to the Portage Bay Swing Band (see background).   

"The difference between me and many chefs is that the business is always what I loved about it," explains Douglas. His professional turn at the skillet started right after high school and he still loves to cook, but especially loves to ask and answer: "At the end of the day, did you or did you not make a living?"

He took high school home economics for the food and the girls and stayed for the sauces and the flair. In 1978, young Tom packed up in Delaware and drove his '67 Chevy Bel Air to Seattle. After an assortment of jobs (construction, wine sales, railroad car repair), he returned to the kitchen and earned stellar reviews as chef at Cafe Sport during its Pike Place Market tenure. At Cafe Sport, now closed, Douglas nurtured his instinctive culinary skill he calls "taste memory."

In 1989, Douglas and his wife and business partner Jackie Cross, accepted financial backing from Cross' uncle to open their own restaurant, the Dahlia Lounge. Other investors had offered the same, but the couple hesitated, waiting for the right offer from the right source.

"I wanted to find someone who had the money to lose," Douglas said. The restaurant floundered for three years, he said, but in five years, the couple bought out Cross' relative, leaving him with a gain well into six figures. "He did good," Douglas says, laughing about the explosive start of his flagship restaurant. Today the restaurant is usually ranked at or near the top of Northwest choices. It is dark, lush and quiet; the waiters dress a uniformed affair.

Douglas reports the clientele is typically older than those at his other restaurants. The menu personifies Douglas and his regionally and internationally acknowledged style of Northwest and Pacific Rim cuisine.

In 1995, Douglas got a small bank loan to open Etta's Seafood in Cafe Sport's vacated property. "I had to sign my life away to get that after being in business for five years," he says.

The seafood eatery, named after the couple's daughter Loretta, is small and narrow and sits just north of Pike Place Market proper. The restaurant's menu is designed for maximum appeal; if Douglas' four restaurants are frequented by five percent of the population, then Douglas says he wants Etta's to appeal to 80 percent of those people. "I just hate when someone reads the menu and walks off," Douglas says.

His signature crab cakes and famous triple coconut cream pie are menu standards in the cozy restaurant. Coat hooks, loaded with winter coats, are shaped like fish bones and split the large panes of glass. The restaurant is bright and bustling.

The Palace Kitchen, the third jewel in Douglas' crown, opened in 1996 and he calls it his gift to Seattle locals, a place to just hang-out. He demystifies the restaurant's name by telling a story about the wait staff relaxing in the kitchen downstairs after the hard work of a big banquet in the palace. Although food is a key to the success of Palace Kitchen (nominated by the James Beard Association as one of the country's best new restaurants in 1996), the bar scene is what is most evident, what with the large horseshoe-shaped bar lurking right inside the front door.

The restaurant does not accept reservations, stays open late and greets patrons with a ready bartender just a few feet inside. A nightly special grilled over an apple wood-stoked fire is part of what Douglas says best represents the ‘lustiness' of the restaurant business.

Lola is the latest Douglas restaurant addition, opened in July 2004. It also uses fresh Northwest ingredients, this time in combination with Greek-inspired recipes. Jackie's grandfather moved to Washington from Greece in the 1900's and eventually married a woman named Lola. The dishes are an amalgamation of family recipes, a trip to Greece and Tom's "taste memory," and regional influences from Spain, Turkey and Morocco.

Already, Lola is pulling in customers who want the latest Douglas experience.

Why another restaurant so close to his others? Several reasons: they're all different from one another so not necessarily in direct competition; there is a synergy in terms of kitchen space and what each produces; and, as Tom has humorously mentioned in other interviews, "I'm kind of fat. I really can't walk farther than that." Despite all that he has going on, he does make daily visits.

How he does it, no one is sure, but Tom seems to have a sixth sense (or an incredible relationship with commercial real estate people) about finding space next to or near existing Douglas property, e.g., the Palace Ballroom just across the street from the Palace Kitchen.

When he moved Dahlia to its new location in May 2000, he knew there would be space for a bakery. The Dahlia Bakery offers restaurant desserts, pastries and breads in a retail setting. The Dahlia Lounge kitchen provides lunches based on seasonal ingredients to be sold out of the bakery.

With three restaurants (pre-Lola) running successfully, Douglas was finally convinced a fan base was in place to release a cookbook of the featured dishes at each venue. His first book "Tom Douglas' Seattle Kitchen," released in 2000, portrays Douglas as a big, curly-haired redhead in a Paul Bunyan-like pose with a yellow-eye rockfish as Babe and a fishing gaffe instead of an axe. He fought to have the word "Seattle" in the title, because most questions were about the city – he knew Seattle was what would draw an audience to the book. "When you're trying to sell your spice rub in Baltimore, it gives you a different kind of legitimacy," he explains. The book continues to do well in the crowded cookbook marketplace.

"Tom created a book with simple recipes for some of the toughest dishes" says Seattle DINING! publisher, Tom Mehren.  "He took a dish like Prime Rib, turned it into the feast it should be, and it only takes about an hour to make."

His second book, "Tom's Big Dinners," is all about home entertaining. It grew from the many stories about Tom Douglas cooking parties where each couple had to bring a dish from his first book. The dinner parties had lots of food and this newest book includes a Douglas narrative telling the reader about his childhood. The book talks big, but has plenty of tidbits and guidance from the decorated chef.

With his mind firmly on the business of making a living, Douglas created the "Tom Douglas Seattle Kitchen." These products include barbeque and teriyaki sauces and spice rubs for chicken, beef, salmon and other meats. Latest to join the list are three new spice rubs: Chinese 12 Spice Rub, Spicy Tokyo Rub and Bengal Masala Rub.

The "Catering & Events" division creates food experiences for personal or business occasions. In the past, that meant at other venues, places like Redhook Brewery, Union Station or private homes. With the appearance of the Palace Ballroom in December 2004, Douglas will have his very own 6,000 square foot venue with space for 175 at a sit-down affair or 250 for a stand-up reception. The space is wired for DSL to entice business events. As with most of their ventures, Tom and Jackie planned just about every detail themselves. Between the two of them, they're interested in all aspects of running their business and remain involved at every level.

With the Hotel Ändra next door, Lola's banquet chef has plenty of opportunity to provide special menus from breakfasts to desserts and every meal in between.

Douglas is also on the board of One Reel, a northwest nonprofit arts organization responsible for several major events in Seattle, including Teatro ZinZanni. He is the mind behind the menu at ZinZanni, altering the offerings as seasons change.

On top of all this, Douglas has an exclusive concessionaire and catering contract with the Paramount and Moore theatres. You'll see bakery and other food items at the shows, along with cocktails, wine and beer. When someone rents the facilities, it's Douglas who caters the events. Ever creative, they have come up with Broadway menus and champagne matinees. Makes you want to shout.

Tom is a winner of the James Beard Best Chef of the Northwest award, the Oscar Awards of the restaurant industry, and has been a featured chef at cooking shows and grand openings all over the country. Now the entrepreneur, self-described on his bio sheet as "middle-aged, tall and round," hosts his own radio program weekly on 710 KIRO AM.

Douglas also makes public appearances. On a recent Friday, he showed up at the Central Market in Shoreline to cook a batch of chicken, flavored with his Rub with Love spice rubs. An 11-year-old girl asks him if he's famous, then shyly acts like she doesn't care when he replies "almost famous."

Many who see him around town talk to him like a long-time neighbor. "They don't say hi, my name is... or anything, they just say ‘have you ever made hash browns out of sweet potatoes?' or something like that," Douglas says. "I think it's sweet."

The amiable, red-haired giant chats with shoppers who wheel by – some thrilled they happened upon the Seattle chef. Diana Herbst, a Seattle and Shoreline substitute teacher, stops to chat about the eel she bought for the sushi she'll soon share with friends. The two trade ideas, the woman rattles off ingredients – avocado, English cucumber, black sesame seed – and Douglas suggests a spice concoction.

Another couple stops to get the chef's input for their evening meal. They've bought a live crab, so Douglas suggests a ginger mayo with lime zest. They come back later, mid-shop, to counsel on an addition of the chef's chop salad out of his second cookbook and to ask if Douglas prefers the crab steamed or boiled. "It depends. If you're putting a little rub on the outside of the crab then you gotta steam," Douglas insists, describing how the seasoning transfers from the shell to the fingers to the crab.

The Northwest is lucky to have Tom Douglas and his signature restaurants. He is the consummate businessman who happens to love to cook and has a hobby that keeps Seattle locals and travelers well fed. His business mantra serves him well: "You can cook as good as you want to cook, but if you can't pay your rent – it's a waste of time."